Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article deals with anxiety about and the shaming of modern urban mothers and wives on the mines of the late colonial Central African Copperbelt. Women's various labours and public presence lead to ambivalent depictions, such as the 'careless mother', that were part of a broader array of anxieties about women's autonomy on the mines. However, urban women rejected such labelling and resisted the isolation of modern motherhood. Instead, they created networks of mutual support and solidarity, they publicly shamed their failing breadwinners, supported one another financially, emotionally and through expressing solidarity in the press, thus seeking economic independence where possible.

The rich and nuanced literature on African intermediaries has shed new light on the colonial encounter from the perspective of African interlocutors, but has often neglected to study failed acts of communication between colonial administrators and non-elite African intermediaries. This article fills in some gaps by focusing on non-successful communications. Analysing rumours and non-conformist modes of petitioning, the article explores misunderstandings between Tanzanians and representatives of the late-colonial state. While the British could afford to ignore idiosyncratic messages when they did not clash with their own operational interests, they had to act upon others, and their responses were not always those desired by the Tanzanian senders. Despite communicating in relative proximity, the close distance between Tanzanians who were not fluent in the bureaucratic idiom of the colonial state and British administrators could not always be bridged.

Defence date: 26 June 2017 ; Examining Board: Prof. Corinna Unger, EUI (First Reader); Prof. Federico Romero, EUI (Second Reader); Prof. Andreas Eckert, Humboldt University Berlin (External Supervisor); Prof. Emma Hunter, University of Edinburgh (External Examiner) ; This Ph.D. thesis is concerned with the way litigants of the Usambara Mountains in Tanganyika spoke and wrote about their disputes and grievances under British rule. Language and narratives are at the core of my analysis. While I will give an overview of litigation patterns of the so-called 'native courts' in the Usambara Mountains from the late 1930s to 1960, and will examine clusters of recurring cases, my main concern is not to write a social history of these courts, but a cultural one. I am interested in recurring narratives and their intellectual roots. What kind of language did the Shambaa and other African litigants use in lawsuits and the many petitions and letters that accompanied their suits? What might have influenced them in their strategic choice of language? What intellectual sources did they draw from? While I am also interested in the outcomes of cases and the success of narratives, my objective is to treat these emerging narratives as windows into specific local perspectives. Why did Shambaa litigants depart so markedly from legal language? Was the legalistic language unsuitable for a specific Shambaa understanding of the law, or were the courts themselves not perceived as places for the dispensation of justice?